Georgina Beyer was a formidable force for New Zealand’s rainbow community, pushing reforms on sex work and civil unions
elieved to be the world’s first transgender person to become a member of parliament, Georgina Beyer is remembered infor her courage, sharp, ribald humour and fierce advocacy of the communities she represented.
“You’re not going to win – you haven’t,” she said. “I have trust in New Zealanders that they will be fair minded, as they always have been – that the democracy that I live in made it possible for somebody like me to be here, in this place.”“I will always remember her courage,” finance minister and former deputy prime minister Grant Robertson said on Monday.
Her speech on sex work was credited with tipping the balance in favour of the prostitution reform bill, which passed by a narrow one-vote margin in 2003. The laws decriminalised sex work in New Zealand, aiming to create a safer environment in which sex workers could take exploitative employers to employment court, not gain a criminal record, and access support if they experienced violence. She spoke candidly about entering the sex industry as a young teenager, and being raped by a group of men.
The law “provides people like me at that time with some form of redress for the brutalisation that might happen when a client pulls a knife,” she said. “It would have been nice to know that … I might have been able to approach the authorities-the police in this case-and say: “I was raped, and, yes, I’m a prostitute, and, no, it was not right that I should have been raped, because I said no.”
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